Bleeding Honesty
by Eleneri
Summary: She was born for pain and power, but sometime before the end of the Reaper War, Jack discovers that someone views her differently, and that he won't let her hide forever. A James Vega/Jack story set in the Commander Rose Athena Shepard continuity.


**Disclaimer: **Mass Effect and all associated licensed characters and locations belong to Bioware/EA. No infringement intended.

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_Set sometime before the end of the Reaper War and after the Citadel DLC._

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**_The Citadel_**

_**Military housing, officer's quarters.**_

* * *

They're lying half on, half off the bed in a welter of tangled sheets and haphazardly thrown pillows. As big as he is, James takes up more than his fair share of mattress space. Jack doesn't mind, not by now. Used to be she wouldn't allow his hands on her, not for any reason, not even while they were fucking, but now…

She doesn't call it fucking anymore. She doesn't quite know what it is, but it's not fucking.

"Hey. You're comfortable."

"Yeah?" James tucks her more tightly against his side, and though Jack won't admit it to him, she likes the feel of his shoulder as a pillow, his thickly-muscled arm around her. He's huge and solid muscle where she is fine bones and lean lines. He feels… secure.

She's already half-asleep by the time he starts stroking her arm. James has wonderful hands - huge, like the rest of him, and strong. Wide, work-roughened palms. Long fingers, calloused from weapons grips and pullup bars. If she wasn't so boneless from the sex, she might object to the touching. It's soft and gentle and completely _not_ what she told him she wanted from him.

Jack's not ready to admit anything more.

She's so busy trying to think about why she doesn't want gentleness from him, even when he clearly won't stop because the man is like_ fucking stubbornness_ on two legs, that she doesn't notice that his fingertips are moving in a pattern for at least ten minutes.

But when she does notice, she realizes he's tracing her tattoos.

"Hey." It's borderline antagonistic, even though he's had his hands on her body and his tongue in her mouth and his cock deep inside her, even though he's made her come so hard she flared and blew out half the lights in the room. Jack feels the familiar warmth of aggression coil through her veins, feels the stirrings of _good_ that she's been trained to feel.

"Hey." It's a quiet rumble, half heard, half felt through the massive wall of his chest, and Jack deflates a little. She's feeling damn loose and fucking near boneless from orgasm, and she doesn't particularly want to start a fight.

The realization should worry her. It doesn't, and that _does _worry her. Just a little.

James' fingertips resume their pattern-tracing, and Jack frowns a little. "What are you doing, soldier boy?"

His sigh inflates his chest, making it rise and fall like a tidal wave. "Just thinking." Now the flat of his hand smooths along the curve of her hip. "You got soft skin,_ chica_."

"Fuck that, I'm metal."

"I hear that." Now he chuckles, a low rumble, like the thunder on Teltin, except there's nothing she dislikes about this rumbling sound. "OK, you're bulletproof. But it's still soft skin to me."

His fingers resume wandering, tracing lines and patterns. Jack tilts her head to look at him. "Now's a bad time to decide you don't like tats, soldier boy."

James shakes his head a little. "Nah. That's not it." His hand moves again, and that's when it clicks. He's not tracing her tats.

He's tracing her scars.

Jack's chest feels tight, and she very uncharacteristically freezes, caught between the driving need to attack and the equally strong, completely alien desire to curl into a defensive ball in the middle of the bed. It's that one second of indecision that costs her, because that's when James moves.

"It's not the tats I don't like, Jack," he says in a low rumble, hovering over her like a great, dark shadow in the dimness of his room. "It's these. " He traces one of the worst of her Cerberus scars with his lips. "I wish I'd been there for these."

"I'd have killed you. If you'd been there. We would have had to fight, and I would have killed you." Dammit, her voice is choked and Jack wants very desperately to be pissed because pissed is better than whatever the fuck this is, and what is he doing to her? This was just supposed to be sex.

"Eh, you'd have tried, anyway." He finds the next one, soothing it with a kiss, and then the next one.

"Stop it." She can't breathe. She really can't breathe.

"No."

"This was just supposed to be sex."

James freezes, lifting his head and staring straight into her eyes. "Fuck that," he growls. "You have no idea what goes on in my head, Jack. It was _never _just about sex."

The rage flares, sharp and protective and electric, and her eyes light with biotic energy. "_Get off me._"

"You want me to move?" James plants himself more solidly on top of her. "Move me. Or make me believe you really want me to go. Go ahead. _Do it_."

Jack's corona flares, and the rest of the lights erupt in a shower of safety glass, raining down on them. She's mostly hidden by his bulk, but she smells blood, and knows that he's been cut. He never even blinks.

"My whole life," James rumbles quietly, "my whole life I've stood between someone I loved and pain. I'm used to having shit taken out on me. I can handle that. What I can't handle is looking at you and knowing that I can't do that for _you_. So you go ahead and get mad, _chica_. You burn, and you explode at me, and you run. Just know that when all that mad burns its way out of you, I will still be there."

Jack explodes in blue light and dark energy, slamming him hard. James rolls with the blow, coming up on his knees in a ready crouch, but he doesn't otherwise move. There's a stone look on his face, hard determination and honesty and a gleam in his eyes that she's seen before. It's the same one Shepard's boyscout husband gives her.

The moment she sees it, she knows that she could put him through the wall and he would still come right back to her, because she's what he wants in his life and he is not going to go away, no matter how fucked up everything is, how fucked up _she_ is. Because he lo-

And James sees it, that split-second when she can't fool herself anymore. "Yeah." He's still on the floor, still in a combat crouch, tense arcs of muscle banding across his shoulders and pecs, his powerful thighs. "Now you get it, Jack."

That's what breaks her. Jack's corona fizzles out, guttering like a spent candle, and she can't stop herself from curling into a ball among the bloodied sheets. She doesn't cry. She's not sure she knows how, thinks she'd shatter into a million pieces if she did.

But she does call for him.

"James…"

He's there, warm arms surrounding her, his whole body fitting itself against hers. "Right here, _chica_."

"I… I'm… I don't know what to do."

His voice is just as quiet as hers, matching her half-whisper. "Yeah. Me either." He presses a kiss to her shoulderblade. "But I know I wanna learn."


End file.
